NO B.S. FRIDAY: Malcolm, I love you!

I try not to follow politics too closely. If I feel like engaging in a reality-television circus I’ll watch X-factor. The contestants are hotter.

It’s about strategic ignorance. I get panned for that a bit, but really, how much difference does it make? “Leadership tensions” are a total side-show to the job of making policy.

Still, my ears pricked up when I heard Malcolm Turnbull give his first speech as PM. I heard something different.

Now, I don’t know if Malcolm will be a good PM. I don’t know if he’s got the right set of policies to take the country forward. We’ll find out.

But what I heard was a very clear and very clever message. And it got me excited. Finally, I think we’ve got a PM who ‘gets it’.

As I said, I don’t know what his policies are, and I don’t know if they’re any good. But it seems to me that he truly gets what’s at stake, and he has a workable model for getting stuff done. This is new.

The keys lines that put a pop in my pants were these:

“The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative. We can’t be defensive, we can’t future-proof ourselves.

“We have to recognise that the disruption that we see driven by technology, the volatility in change is our friend if we are agile and smart enough to take advantage of it.”

This is a radical departure from the framework that’s driven previous governments.

At its heart it’s a call to come out of the defensive bunkers we’ve dug ourselves into. Listen to that line: “We can’t future-proof ourselves.”

Boom.

“Future-proofing” the economy, future proofing the pensions system, future-proofing the health system. It’s become a political cliché. But it’s a total statement of fear. ‘The future is scary, and we need to get our defences in place now so the future doesn’t kill us with its horrible claws and sharp teeth.’

But Turnbull’s right. It’s garbage. You can’t defensively prepare for the future. To survive and thrive you need to keep moving forward. You need to keep pace with the changing world around you. You need to be on the hunt for opportunities.

So it’s exciting for me that he goes gunning for this from day one. You can’t get locked down in a defensive mindset. It’s true for the individual and it’s true for the nation.

Politics in Australia had become the politics of fear, and the politics of protection. Abbott promised to protect us from boats and from a tax. Labor promised to protect us from Abbott.

And when we’re locked down in our bunkers, there’s no appetite for cooperation and working together. It’s everyone for themselves.

And I think Turnbull gets this. Because he’s worked in the real world. He knows that you need to motivate your staff to get stuff done. You can’t pander to their fears and insecurities and then expect them to come up with good work.

And so in his first speech he’s looking to recast the role of the Prime Minister away from “Protector in Chief” towards something of a CEO – the focal point of a collective vision, and a source of motivation.

“We need to have in this country and we will have now, an economic vision, a leadership that explains the great economic opportunities and challenges we face. [That] describes the way in which we can handle those challenges, seize those opportunities and does so in a manner that the Australian people understand so that we are seeking to persuade rather than seeking to lecture.”

This is a CEO mindset.

The Australian ship has been drifting for years. We stopped having a reason to exist. Our economy was the envy of the world. We enjoyed the best life-style on the planet. Our cricket teams defeated all-comers. We had nothing to work for. All we wanted was to hold on to what we had.

We became defensive.

But as any business knows now, you can’t stand still. “Disruption” is one of the most powerful forces in the economy today. The CEOs who find this terrifying aren’t CEOs for long.

Turnbull isn’t one of those CEOs.
On any measure the Australian economy is still the envy of the world. Living standards are fantastic. Unemployment is low. Inflation sorted.

And yet consumers and businesses are locked in a recessionary mindset. They’re not spending and they’re not investing.

Because for decades our leaders have encouraged us to feel scared.

If Turnbull can do nothing but turn this around, he will have given this country a fantastic gift. And I’m excited that that seems to be what he’s about.

“This will be a thoroughly Liberal government committed to freedom, the individual and the market. There has never been a more exciting time to be alive than today and there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.”

Exactly. These are wild and amazing times. Anything is possible. We should be reaching out to the future with both hands.

That vision, of where a talented and ingenious Australian population meets an incredible future is exciting. We should be excited. We should be totally pumped.

And maybe all it takes is for our leaders to stop selling us fear.

Hopefully, and finally, we’ve got a PM who gets it.

Of course this is just one speech, so we’ll see. How do you think Malcolm’s going to go?

Most of the leaders in the US government are all successful businessman and they are knowingly screwing their people over for their own gain. I’m not saying Malcolm will be like that but successful business people don’t necessarily make good national leaders. oh there’s also that other politician in Italy, Silvio what’s his name…

Keep being falsely PUMPED (or in sleep) my friend. It is very naïve to think that politicians are working for you. WAKE UP PEOPLE. Do some research about his background before getting pumped… WORDS ARE CHEAP, LOOK FOR THEIR DEEDS. Politicians are professional LIARS.

Eddie, you’ve swallowed the Koolade yourself and become a Professional Pessimist. It seems that not even 1% of you has any hope that something or someone can make a profound difference. Yet it’s that 1% of hope that was answered by the actions of politicians who DID work for the people. People like Martin Luther King or Gandi. They caused massive changes and they worked for the people. And guess what Eddie? Their work ALWAYS started with words. Everything begins with words and, when followed by actions, leads to changes. Is Malcolm that person? I don’t know. But what I do know is that no-one who stands up deserves to be shot down in flames before they get off the starting blocks. He’s doing a lot more than you are just by sticking his neck out. Let’s give the man a go before burning him at the stake.

Mal’s problem is that he joined the wrong party.
He should be in the Labour Party, where he would make a much better fit.
The Liberal Party is not “Liberal”, it’s “Conservative”.
Those Conservative forces are going to hamstring any efforts he makes to bring the Nation into the 21st Century. More’s the pity.

yes jon..one speech….but who wrote it? now we all know that an industrialised, manufacturing nation is a richer one than an agrarian one. we must stop sending all…i mean ‘total’ of our natural resources for easy biccys overseas for refining and return as ‘goods’.. we must…must..start up our manufacturing basis again. we have to grow out of our reliance on other nations for survival. like ‘oh dear china is going off the rails we are doomed’. no way …we should control our own destiny as a nation. and a good place to start is our wonderful..too big to fail banks!! lets cut our ties with american banks for a start ..sack the political cronies you are talking about..the fearmongering ones..and replace them with decent, progressive people. raise interest rates…yes man..raise the b. interest rates to 8% for borrowing..borrowing, or rather lending to business…let good business dictate our future direction. let people start saving again for a decent return on their money..then the banks can lend out as much as is deposited. now we have leverage by say cba at 78:1..meaning for every dollar you bank they lend out $78. wow..nice if you can do it..but inverted tops eventually fall over. and all of our banks are doing it.
off sheet balances at our major banks; for housing over 1 trillion dollars..all borrowed from overseas. how do we repay if they want it back? and the awful part is that our government has allowed all of this to happen for over 40 years. government…yes the circus is a better name. finally, a house was once a home….now it has become and investment vehicle..and this is at the heart of our problem as a nation. homeless people with no hope of ever getting there. i heard yesterday on the radio that many, many families (parents and children) in perth were living in shelters and cars and almost anywhere ..in our prosperous nation…this should not happen. meanwhile our illustrious premier has saddled the state with over $25b of debt since his arrival. now he wants to spend another $1.6 bn on a road nobody wants. i cannot recall a good government anywhere in the world since maggie t. i agree with you …as you can readily see i am a man of vision..i visualise a grand final between west coast and fremantle…and i am gonna be backing freo..my home town yet.

I’ve moved 15 times since my house and biz got torched by an arsonist, lived in sheds, now living in a lounge room on a fold down mattress, salvo’s wouldn’t give me a shirt, govt. wouldn’t give the $900 stimulus, but fined me 3G, which I don’t have, for not putting in a tax return, got refused for the dole, because I said I was working for free for people I owed money to, and the place I was sleeping in the back of, the 130 billion / year that australia spends on welfare is mainly given to bureaucrats., which hockey forgot to mention,

The parts I used to design and manufacture are still in hot demand, I haven’t advertised for years, but I still get people tracking me down, but I can’t even get a place to live, let alone set up a business

John has created individuals who stand on their own two feet as entrepreneurs . Isn’t that what is happening throughout the economy. 10 per cent of “workers” belong to unions . This means 90 per cent make their own arrangements . If you believe John is right then we have to get rid of middle class welfare and corporate welfare .
The right are a silent majority let’s make a noise for once .
Sign my petition below . The first time I have ever made a noise .

hi everybody..hold onto your hats!! forget turnbull…..just in>> global debt US$223.75tn, made up of govt. debt US$55.7tn, finance sector:banks, ins.cos.US$75.3tn, pte. and corp. debt. 92.3tn..total US$223.75tn..is 300% approx. of global gdp! is that sustainable? besides that the derivatives debt is now over US$800tn….well, well..come on malcolm sort that out!! all the above comes from the bank of international settlements. so i guess its true. also..russia recently tried to give american and euro nations a list of 20,000 names of known terrorists trying to infiltrate the mass exodus of syrians. those countries : america and euros..declined the names. russia for sure is not gonna let those terrorists into their country..but we are…strange…? just wondering why?

Malcom has form as a slippery little sucker and may lack even a shred of integrity, HOWEVER it is totally awesome to hear these words of his speech, that in itself is worthy. If one percent gets through that is 100 times better than the other fear mongers.
And yes maybe he joined the wrong party, after all he famously said once (in a previous life) he would be PM and it didn’t matter which party that was with.

And what about retirees, who are too early to live off superannuation and must rely on the pension which they were promised back in the 1970s? Even those who own a very low priced investment property in Sydney, where the median is $1M, won’t have any pension from January 2017 due to huge changes to the assets test where individuals owning $530K or couples owning $830K (excluding their homes) will no longer receive any pension. 91,000 pensioners will lose all of their pensions, and 240,000 will have their pensions slashed! And they certainly cannot live off 1 rental income after expenses. This will also hit invalid pensioners. What a disgraceful way to treat the elderly and disabled!

Hi Hugh, Amen to that. On your post, I think it makes a lot of people sick to the gizzards when they here certain PMs talking about helping all types of people. From this lot, it will never happen. I wonder where the 12,000 will be working and what wage they’ll get.

Let’s hope it’s goodbye to the dinosaurs in Parliament. The world has changed – dramatically – and at last it appears that someone in Parliament has noticed. It’s good to hear some positive words from a poli; but now let’s see the positive action that goes with it.
BTW I believe there should be some key long-term policies that are supported by all parties and are not subject to petty party politics. It appears that any potential long-term policy, that doesn’t provide a benefit to the party in power before the next election, doesn’t get a look in. That’s too short term. Therefore there has been little or no long term forward-looking strategic policies for years. The only decent long-term strategy, to provide modern communications for a modern economy, i.e. the NBN, was almost shot down in flames and is now bumbling along on one engine. No wonder Australia has been drifting for years!

Interesting The New PM embraced disruption to the point of gunning the first term Elected PM by any means, what this clearly tells us is that this is an ambitious man that would seize power through &.by any means ( as long as he is not found out to be doing the wrong things even though it is clearly out of self interest that he has plotted all this time -cloak & daggers), it is true that leapords does not change their spot… He has in fact failed miserably as a communications minister at all fronts including budget overblown of $23b , probably too busy plotting for the PM job…hardly a credentials to be bragging about. Any executive would have been sacked long ago…If run the country as a investment banker, we would be in trouble in no time as the saying go, the bankers are in it for themselves!!

Its true he is ambitious but i don’t believe he has been planning this take over and wanted to topple Abbott. The party were desperate and begged him to challenge. They could all see the liberals were not going to win the next election under Abbott. Malcolm just happened to be in the right place right time this time around. At the last leadership spill Malcolm wasn’t even interested in challenging and in fact I think he may have even supported Abbott.

So if he’s talking up new technology and innovation, surely he must also support investment in new technologies that can make Australia the leaders in the world again. And this has to include renewables. I know it’s a contentious issue for the liberals but if we continue our current non investment and non support of renewables, it will not send the message to the market that wesre innovators. We have the people, we have the great ideas, we just need it to be supported from the top down.

Hi Jon
I sure hope Malcolm gets it….Australia has always been Australia’s biggest business, with many millions of shareholders, you, me, the kids next door, the corner shop owner, the refugee, the footy coach etc etc.
Let’s hope we finally have a CEO who gets this.
Businesses can not mark time. they either go forward, or backwards…there is no standing still.
For too long we have been living in fear of doing something to improve the future.
We can no longer afford to do nothing, as then our children will need to make up for our waste, our inaction, and also work for their future…which will double their work load.
Wake up Australia stop the infighting and work as a business team for the good of all.

A good theory Jon, but the prime minister is still just a message boy for that particular party. Always was, and I believe always will be, till I’m proven wrong. No body ever ticked, or made a mark on a ballot paper to vote for a particular person as P.M. It is taken for granted that the leader of the party, that was elected by the party, will be P.M. if that party wins. My point is, The P.M. can and will only do what that Party allows him to do. A good BS Artist will ONLY fool a party for a while, but when the people see no results the polls start to make the party worried.

Once again Jon you have hit the nail on the head. They want us to live in fear, this is how they control us. An electorate living in fear is so easy to manipulate!

The first quote you used is so important. The idea of embracing rather than fearing the future is the best way forward. Disruptive technologies do not have to be a bad thing if we have visionary leaders.

I am not a dedicated Liberal or Labor voter, or any other color voter, but I do think that if Turnbull can get control of the party then I think he can take us in the right direction.

I wondered why if he’s so interested in getting the economy going, why was his first agenda item to undermine our good constitutional government by stealthily removing knights & dames from the honours list?

Seems he’s got other things on his mind – what’s important to him!! His dream of a republic (what kind of republic we’re never sure…)

He’s not struggling like the rest of us from the poor economic management of the last 8 years! His own home is worth more than Kirribilli House, over twice as much by all reports!!

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